Letting property insurance: The facts

If you have decided that you want to let a property, one of the first facts that you will have to deal with is that you are taking some degree of risk because you are placing a valuable commodity into the hands of someone else who isn’t particularly concerned about its welfare because it doesn’t belong to them.

It isn’t unheard of for tenants to do a disappearing act in the middle of the night and take all the fixtures and fittings with them, nor is it unheard of that they can cause all kinds of damage before they leave. Even if you are lucky and get decent tenants, there will still be some element of wear and tear, and possible accidents that are left to you to deal with.

All this means that you need to take out letting property insurance. It may be higher than the usual home insurance but that’s because there is more chance that it will be claimed against.

If you are still pondering the wisdom of getting letting property insurance, another fact to consider is that if you have a mortgage on the property and do not inform the lender that you are letting it, or get appropriate insurance, they have the right to call in the loan.

There are some landlords who believe that getting owner-occupier insurance will cover them. In some cases they start to rent out a property that has already got this kind of policy in place, and in other cases, they have a buy to let property and take out the owner occupier policy to cover it.

The first scenario means that the terms of the policy have been broken and so can become null and void, and the second scenario means that the policy was taken out with false declarations and so if you need to make a claim it will be fraudulent, which is a serious offence.

It is a fact that getting the right insurance for the property that you want to let is not only going to give you piece of mind, but will also be a very secure safety net if you need to make a claim.